Richard Sandberg

veski innovation fellow

In July 2015, Professor Richard Sandberg accepted the offer of a veski innovation fellowship worth $150,000 over three years. The funding of this fellowship will be matched in cash and in-kind by his host organisation the University of Melbourne.

Research project: Impacting industry by enabling a step-change in simulation fidelity for flow and noise problems

Using a numerical code developed over the past seven years in the UK and US, Professor Richard Sandberg will harness the power of Australia’s and the world’s high-performance super computers to gain better understanding of turbulence and to develop new models for industry to reduce noise and predict turbulence.

Advances in fluid dynamics research, made possible through computer simulations, play a role in almost every aspect of Australian life. Professor Sandberg’s research can lead to more efficient conventional and renewable power generation, more environmentally friendly and affordable plane travel, and improved heating and cooling systems.

Through an integrated research and education program, Professor Sandberg’s research team will use modern supercomputers as ‘time machines’, enabling flow and noise predictions with unprecedented accuracy to help design the next generations of ‘green’ engineering devices decades earlier than otherwise possible.

The research will not only have a scientific and economic impact but will ultimately benefit Australian society by creating new knowledge and training for the next generation of engineers and scientists. This training is fundamental for future advances in engineering in Australia enabled by high-performance computing.

The project will also move Victoria, and the University of Melbourne, from a reliance on traditional experimentations with wind tunnels to a process of numerical validation using simulations that have already demonstrated potential.

As well as bringing the scientific and technical brilliance needed to simulate these experiments, Richard will focus on supporting greater industry and academic collaborations.

Key facts

One of the youngest ever to be appointed to Professor in his field in Southampton.

Co-author of more than 100 publications including 36 in leading journals.

Gained a pivotal understanding of high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics in the US, which informed the development of the numerical code he brings to Victoria.